The spiral path of nursing knowledge: The contribution made by Reed’s model

This article presents Reed’s perspective on the development of nursing knowledge. Her concept is embedded in the perspective of intermodernism. For Reed, intermodernism is a philosophy for nursing science and practice and thus represents a way of looking at the content, structure, and process of scientific theory. Reed presents her concept in the form of a spiral path composed of the philosophical, practical, and theoretical dimensions of nursing knowledge. After an overview of Reed’s perspective, we offer an illustration of her proposal with Lawler’s theoretical development of somology. Lawler’s development pathway can be used to incorporate the components of Reed’s spiral path in a meaningful way. The discussion shows how Reed’s concept can improve the description and understanding of a nursing knowledge development process. Finally, the article provides a rare summary of Reed’s work in French.